1.) Ding dong, Osama’s dead — Navy Seals shot and killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden 60 miles northeast of Pakistan’s capitol last night after bin Laden refused to surrender, according to ABC News. U.S. Intelligence officials discovered the man who would be their link to OBL four years ago, reports the Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein. The man, who officials learned about during interrogations at Gitmo, is “one of the few Al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin laden.” Three other residents of the compound were killed during the raid, one of them a woman, who “a bin Laden aide used as a human shield.” According to the White House, bin Laden was “buried at sea” at 2 a.m. In a nearly unprecedented act of awareness, the New York Times’ “dropped the honorific for Bin Laden,” and will not refer to him in its post-death coverage as “Mr. bin Laden.”
2.) Pakistan has some splainin’ to do — The luxurious compound where bin Laden may have lived for several years wasn’t a secret to the Pakistanis. Abbottabad, the Pakistani town just outside of the capitol, is home to a military college and several military units. “It is very much off the usual track for foreigners … and I simply do not believe Bin Laden could hide there unaided by, or unknown to, the Pakistanis,” a U.S. military official told Yahoo! News. British diplomat Sir Christopher Meyer told the New York Times that “some” in the Pakistani government “have been complicit in concealing Osama bin Laden for a very long time.” Over at Real Clear World, Ben Domenech trades his old Pakistan query (“To what degree Pakistan was merely useless vs. actively undermining our efforts”) for a more pressing one: “Who in Pakistan’s government knew Osama was there, and how long did they know it?” Says Jeff Goldberg: “Pakistan has a great deal of explaining to do — how could Bin Laden have been living near Islamabad, in a city, Abbotttabad, that is in some ways a military cantonment?”
3.) NASA makes case for getting rid of itself — “The high-profile voyage of Endeavor is off until at least next Sunday because of a technical problem,” reports the AP. “The latest culprit, believed to be a bad fuse box, illustrates just how complex these space machines are and why NASA’s goodbye to the 30-year shuttle program may be a long one.” And perhaps why it should be “over” over, after the Endeavor finishes its trip. NASA launch director Mike Leinbach said, “It is kind of funny. It’s almost like they don’t want to give up.” Har. Har. Har.
4.) White House releases calendar, Obamacare czar was busy — “Ten weeks after a request for documents, including notes and e-mails, related to the meetings between White House officials and special interest groups that set the stage for Obamacare’s passage, President Obama’s lawyer released a calendar of meetings between the interest groups and a top health care official in the months leading up to the law’s passage,” reports TheDC’s Jonathan Strong. “The 26-page calendar lists over one hundred meetings between Nancy-Ann DeParle and representatives of unions, business groups.” Rep. Fred Upton requested the documents in an attempt to find out more about the backroom deals that turned Obamacare from a doorstop into a law. “Some of the groups that met most frequently with DeParle include AARP, which represents old people, the unions SEIU and AFL-CIO, the pharmaceutical drug sector, and the insurance industry’s trade association, AHIP.”
5.) Obama resuscitates the DREAM Act — “We didn’t raise the Statue of Liberty with its back to the world; we raised it with its light to the world,” Pres. Obama said during his community college commencement speech in Miami, Florida, last week. The 90 percent minority audience warmed to Obama’s promise of reviving the DREAM Act, which Sen. Harry Reid allegedly let die to keep from offending the paleface majority in Nevada. According to the transcripts of Obama’s speech, he is going to make Reid bring it up all over again. “I want to work with Democrats and Republicans, yes, to protect our borders, and enforce our laws, and address the status of millions of undocumented workers,” Obama said. “And I will keep fighting alongside many of you to make the DREAM Act the law of the land.” Harry Reid needs some Tylenol. NOW.
6.) The children are no longer our future, poll finds — “Forty-four percent of Americans believe it is likely that today’s youth will have a better life than their parents, even fewer than said so amid the 2008-2009 recession, and the lowest on record for a trend dating to 1983,” reports Gallup. Perhaps due to the lack of jobs and our excess debt, wealth poll respondents were the least likely to say that America’s children will be more successful than their parents. Respondents who made less than $30k per year, however, had slightly less trouble believing that their kids could do better than them.
VIDEO: President Obama’s live remarks on the death of Osama Bin Laden
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